Enter the Automaton

After their « breathtaking adventure » with side-project The John Venture, which was the unlikely encounter between Angil's post modern folk and B R OAD WAY's hybrid electronica, resulting in the eponym album (released October 2006) critically acclaimed by the press, the radio and TV (Inrockuptibles, France Inter, Arte, Magic, etc.) and a one-year tour (through France, Switzerland and Italy with Sole, Jel, El-P, Emilie Simon, Beat Assaillant etc.), The Saint-Etienne based four piece band B R OAD WAY has now taken some time in their studio to finally deliver us their second album Enter The Automaton.

Following the very ambient 06:06am (released June 2005), Enter The Automaton marks a clear turn for B R OAD WAY who obviously did not come back unchanged from the John Venture experience...

Indeed, until now B R OAD WAY's music was rather evocative of eletronica tin the vein of Boards of Canada's, where machines remained the keystone of a fragile yet stable construction, with melodies used parsimoniously and rarely put in the foreground... A vision of pop music revisited by My Bloody Valentine in some ways...

When entering their automaton, we (re)discover a band in the real sense of the term, where machines give some of the space they used to fill to the benefit of vocals, piano, guitars or even cello. “It's a little as if our main influence – pop music – was unconsciously taking over but at the same time we remain faithful to our cinematographic universe and the tracks we have explored on  06:06am” says Jan, composer of the bases of the band's music.

Listen to Enter The Automaton and you'll easily imagine it being released by the Anticon for example, while also feeling influences by bands like The Velvet Underground, Radiohead or Sigur Ros... Its universe combines an intimate and melancholic side (« Automatons », « Letters in Hearts ») with a more frontal and energetic one (« Stop Motion », « High Treason »). As for the video sequences created by Vj Raize, while following the spirit of 06:06am, they naturally follow the 3 musicians evolution with the integration of colour and more rhythmical cuts, thus precipitating the listener through alternate sensations from euphoria to melancholy and the other way round...

Faithful to the cinematographic universe developed on 06:06am while letting their pop influences express themselves more widely (acoustic instruments, vocals), the members of B R OAD WAY invite us with Enter The Automaton to a new odyssey through yet unexplored lands...

Let us bet that, just like The John Venture did, this journey will not leave you unchanged...

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LETTERS IN HEARTS

STOP MOTION

One of this year's major albums and even a major album in itself. Dense and intense, this record won't leave anyone unchanged. Enter the Automaton is simply an accomplished and magnificent album, [...] able to reconcile musical genres by merging them until it creates a new one. Not to be missed whether on record or on stage. Enter the Automaton by B R OAD WAY, one of the great albums of 2008.

Froggy's Delight

CD'AUJOURD'HUI - FRANCE 2

"Listened to and approved by Les Inrockuptibles"

Les Inrockuptibles review

The cheek of B R OAD WAY is highly seducing, between intimate melancholic pop and  powerful take offs. The perfect soundtracks to farewells at a train station, B R OAD WAY feels like being at the movies...

Alternatives, France Inter ("Album of the Week")

Impressive with its maturity... A very particular sensation... A great album.

Mouvement

Post-rock tinted with floating electronica and abstract hip-hop scratches... The ideal record to find your bearings through the fog.

Tsugi

Mixing electro influences to a definitively pop rock sound approach, B R OAD WAY draws audio landscapes where melancholy and energy perfectly combine. Unique and precious.

Openmag

Despite their clever references to several decades of pop music, the band know how to preserve their identity... B R OAD WAYis a band more fulfilled and mature than ever... With tracks like "Caution Wet Floor", "The Key Maker", "High Treason" or the hit "Stop Motion", Broadway simply gets closer to Tarwater, The Notwist ou Hood, to say the least.

Trax

A record made of ambiances with melodies still to be conquered, full of spirit and hypnotic vibrations. Between dream and reality.... Everything here seems suspended, everything holds in the fragile expectation of what's to come next, and in all its colours. Sumptuous.

D-Side

To B R OAD WAY, the infinitely small, the details are pushed to the extreme to become something infinitely huge... This new B R OAD WAY album is an ode to the intensification of ideas, to the imbrication of ideal gestures, a beautifully mastered record... A great record with great ideas, like a dogma which would above all praise the seeking for pleasure rather than the pleasure not to break rules. Unequalled album. Magnificent.

ADA

When Enter The Automaton presents some jewels with Nordic melodies hinting at Sigur Ros, slightly warmed up par Radiohead, and not less focused on details than The Notwist (" Letters In Hearts "), Broadway becomes a superb pop band (sublime " Caution Wet Floor ")... Enter The Automaton dazzles with coherence...